Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

APA Member Interview: Emily Rose Ogland

21. February 2020 Philosophy News News
Emily Rose Ogland has just completed an MA in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick (UK), having graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2018 with a BA in French and Philosophy. Her research interests center largely on phenomenological questions of human nature and intersubjectivity. She is pursuing an MA in Literary Translation and hopes [More]
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Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates

21. February 2020 Philosophy News News
2020.02.18 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Carrie Figdor, Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates, Oxford University Press, 2018, 220pp., $57.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198809524. Reviewed by Kristin Andrews, York University When a scientist says that neurons predict, drosophila decide, plants choose, or bacteria cooperate, how should we interpret those claims? This is the central question of Carrie Figdor's provocative book, in which she argues we should understand scientists literally (or, more precisely, we should take them Literally). The claim that neurons predict may be false, but predict refers to the same kind of action whether it is being performed by a child, a dog, a pea plant, or a neuron. Don't be confused. Figdor isn't going to tell you whether neurons actually predict, or whether drosophila really decide. She also isn't going to tell you what predict or decide refer to (or what the words mean). With a... Read [More]
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A Strange List of “Great Value” Colleges for Undergraduate Philosophy Degrees (Updated)

20. February 2020 Philosophy News News
A website called “Great Value Colleges” has published a list of “100 Great Value Colleges for Philosophy Degrees (Bachelor’s) for 2020.”  The creators of the ranking only considered U.S. schools where annual tuition is less than $20,000. They then gave those schools points for various factors, with the totals ranging from 5 points for the school ranked 100th to 20 points for the school ranked 1st. How does a school get points? This is what I was able to learn of their process: Schools get a point for being accredited. Schools get more points the cheaper their tuition is (4 points if the tuition is less than $10,000 per year, 3 points if the tuition is $10,000 – $14,999, 2 points if it’s between $15,000 and $19,999, etc.). Schools also get a point for each type of graduate degree (MA, PhD) they offer in philosophy (if they do). Then there’s the “20-year return on investment” criteria, based on data from Payscale, with ROIs above $600,000 getting 5 points, and smaller ROIs getting proportionately fewer points. Lastly, there’s what they call the “wow factor”, with 1 point awarded “for each unique feature or program that ‘wowed’ us.” In other words: they take a selection of some of the various factors that might enter into one’s decision-making about where to go to school, along with some that might not, and combine and weight them in a seemingly random manner. [More]
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Eva Feder Kittay’s Recent Book Wins 2020 Prose Award for Philosophy

20. February 2020 Philosophy News News
The Association of American Publishers has announced the Subject Category winners of its Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Awards.  In the Philosophy Category, the winning book is Learning from My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds by Eva Feder Kittay, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy (Emerita) at Stony Brook University, published by Oxford University Press. The PROSE awards are aimed at recognizing “publishers who produce books, journals, and digital products of extraordinary merit that make a significant contribution to a field of study in the humanities, biological and physical sciences, reference and social sciences.” The shortlist of finalists in the philosophy category also included: Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind by Susan Schneider (NASA, University of Connecticut), published by Princeton University Press The Logic in Philosophy of Science by Hans Halvorson (Princeton University), published by Cambridge University Press The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud and Pseudoscience by Lee McIntyre (Boston University), published by MIT Press You can see the list of winners in other categories here. An overall humanities prize, and then a prize across all categories, will be announced over the next several weeks. The post Eva Feder Kittay’s Recent Book Wins 2020 Prose Award for Philosophy appeared first on Daily [More]
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A Strange List of “Great Value” Colleges for Undergraduate Philosophy Degrees

20. February 2020 Philosophy News News
A website called “Great Value Colleges” has published a list of “100 Great Value Colleges for Philosophy Degrees (Bachelor’s) for 2020.”  The creators of the ranking only considered U.S. schools where annual tuition is less than $20,000. They then gave those schools points for various factors, with the totals ranging from 5 points for the school ranked 100th to 20 points for the school ranked 1st. How does a school get points? This is what I was able to learn of their process: Schools get a point for being accredited. Schools get more points the cheaper their tuition is (4 points if the tuition is less than $10,000 per year, 3 points if the tuition is $10,000 – $14,999, 2 points if it’s between $15,000 and $19,999, etc.). Schools also get a point for each type of graduate degree (MA, PhD) they offer in philosophy (if they do). Then there’s the “20-year return on investment” criteria, based on data from Payscale, with ROIs above $600,000 getting 5 points, and smaller ROIs getting proportionately fewer points. Lastly, there’s what they call the “wow factor”, with 1 point awarded “for each unique feature or program that ‘wowed’ us.” In other words: they take a selection of some of the various factors that might enter into one’s decision-making about where to go to school, along with some that might not, and combine and weight them in a seemingly random manner. [More]
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British Journal for the History of Philosophy Awards Best Article Prize

20. February 2020 Philosophy News News
The British Journal for the History of Philosophy has announced the recipient of the 2019 Rogers Prize, its annual best article prize. The prize winner is Nicholaos Jones, professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, for his article, “The Architecture of Fazang’s Six Characteristics,” (volume 27, issue 3). (You can access an ungated version of the paper here). Here’s the abstract of Professor Jones’ article: This paper examines the Huayan teaching of the six characteristics as presented in the Rafter Dialogue from Fazang’s Treatise on the Five Teachings. The goal is to make the teaching accessible to those with minimal training in Buddhist philosophy, and especially for those who aim to engage with the extensive question-and-answer section of the Rafter Dialogue. The method for achieving this goal is threefold: first, contextualizing Fazang’s account of the characteristics with earlier Buddhist attempts to theorize the relationships between wholes and their parts; second, explicating the meaning Fazang likely attributes to each of the six characteristics; third, situating the characteristics as explicated within Fazang’s broader metaphysical framework.  The runner-up for the prize is Jing Huang, a doctoral student at Freie Universität Berlin, for her paper “Did Nietzsche Want His Notes Burned? Some Reflections on the Nachlass Problem” (Vol. 27, no. 6). Here’s the abstract of Ms. Huang’s article: The issue of the use [More]
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